Getting Started Prefabbing - Complete (POI Creation)

[Dieselpunk]

Thanks guys!

[dcsobral]

Two tips that have been useful to me.

 

First, Pilles Editor has a "Rotation to Face North" attribute under Xml. Use this to indicate which side the entrance to your building is facing, so that it will connect properly to roads and paths. It should be a number from 0 to 3, indicating how many 90 degrees turns clockwise is required to make your POI face north. Otherwise, you can also use this simple table:

 

0 - POI is facing North

1 - POI is facing West

2 - POI is facing South

3 - POI is facing East

 

You can figure the rotation of blocks similarly:

 

0 - Block is facing North

1 - Block is facing East

2 - Block is facing South

3 - Block is facing West

 

Note that numbers 1 and 3 for block rotation are the opposite direction of the previous attribute, because that attribute does not indicate which direction the POI is facing, but how many times to turn it to get it to face North.

[Vomkat]

Once you build a prefab, how do you get it to align properly with roads? What should you do while building the prefab to ensure it works with the roads? I read the preceding post, but its not clear - I'm not asking whether the building is facing north or west, how do you get it to face the road? How far away is the road going to be? Can you make a road or driveway that will intersect with a generated road?

Edited November 8, 2018 by Vomkat (see edit history)

[Kam R.]

Once you build a prefab, how do you get it to align properly with roads? What should you do while building the prefab to ensure it works with the roads? I read the preceding post, but its not clear - I'm not asking whether the building is facing north or west, how do you get it to face the road? How far away is the road going to be? Can you make a road or driveway that will intersect with a generated road?

 

 

If the prefab is for a town: The northern border of your prefab's area will seamlessly align with a road by default, so build the front of your prefab facing north and if you want a driveway or road connection, build the road all the way to the northern border and it will flow right into the city grid. :]

 

For towns it's easy, for wilderness POI – idk, don't think it's possible to connect them with those gravel paths or even any of the country roads, but maybe the modding gurus have some input on that (I'm curious about that too ).

[Magoli]

It sounds crazy and it doesn't look that way, BUT...

 

- mathematically all the wilderness-prefabs ARE connected to their paths.

There is no single wilderness-POI without a path connected to them.

 

- esthetically sometimes (always) it looks they arent connected well to their paths - this has 3 Reasons:

 

1.

The booked place (socket) for a wilderness-POI is always a perfect Square (e.g. 30by30 or 47by47)

In this Square the engine builds a circle for placing the prefab into the world.

U all have seen the big cliffy half earthgaps around some wilderness-POI's (big holecutter-principe)

Also if the land is to low the engine will generate halfround humps to make the surface flat and even.

In this flattened out circular area the engine will place the prefab.

Here the displacement from prefab and path begins.

Another point:

Most of the prefab's entrances are about in the middle of the building. But the connection-point for a prefab to the path is the prefab's N/W corner.

Here the displacement from prefab and path continues.

But lets go further:

 

2.

Prefabs in the middle of a path:

The connection-point from prefab to path is IMO the most northernwest corner of the prefab.

So if the path follows south/east-direction the prefab will cross/block the path.

The path-gen-algorythm doesn't care if the prefab is straight above it. This is not smart IMO

Not to mention all the unwalkable pathareas like path is going through water or over that big gasps and humps on POI's i mentioned in 1.

 

3.

IMO there is no way in A16 to let the prefab's entrace pointing to the path.

'RotationToFaceNorth'-command doesnt work anymore in wilderness IMO.

All the wilderness-POI's are spawning in their default rotation (how they were created).

 

 

fazit:

most times the connection from prefab to path will look uncanny, unnatural and will be a pain for the eyes.

adding point 1,2 and 3 together it becomes very clear again:

 

the A16-rwg-world-generating-engine is grab

 

sad but true - because we dont have another

Edited November 8, 2018 by Magoli (see edit history)

[Penzed]

Dont wanna start a new thread, but i think my question fits in well here.

There are many things missing in the editormenu, like bladetraps and switches. I knew u cant do whole electricity builds, but not beeing able to use it for deco is stupid. I tried to givemyself xp via console to craft and place it, but that didnt work( cant get beyond lvl 4).

So my questions, is there a simple way to use blocks/deco wich are not avaible in the poi editor?

( Complex: export poi to singlepayer game, edit it, save it, reexport to editor. Is that even posibble? )

[Pille]

I guess you missed the dev block switch in the creative menu (see red arrow):

 

[Penzed]

oha, thx will try it tomorrow.

[Penzed]

I want to make a prefab to a quest location. Do i just need to change the xml from that prefab? F.e. the difficulty tier, if i want it at another tier then the standart "1". How to make it a killing, a gather quest?

And what means "sleeperislootvolume"?

[Pille]

Yes you have to set a quest tag in the xml file:

 

<property name="QuestTags" value="fetch"/>

 

Possible values:

quest, trader, clear, fetch, hidden_cache

 

I don't know if all tags are valid but 'clear' (killing quest) and 'fetch' (gather quest) should work. Afaik you have to place a questRallyMarker block (id 1947) to enable the players to start the quest. Fetch quests need a questsatchel block (id 1777) somewhere in the POI. sleeperislootvolume or the alternative term 'priority volume' means that you can place a sleeper volume inside another sleeper volume and the sleepers located in the inner volume will not be spawned if players enter the outer volume (which is quite useful).

[Penzed]

Thanks again. I will play around with the new infos.

 

Update: fetch and clear works fine. But imo the poi looks a bit empty, maybe i can improve it/ got new ideas.

Release soon.

Edited February 18, 2019 by Penzed (see edit history)

[Pille]

Maybe you can take some ideas from other prefabs ... Good luck!

[Penzed]

And another questions. How to add a sleeper"area" to a new prefab. i always copy an old one to a new prefab. But there must be a way to add a new one to a new prefab, or iamwrong?! ( i dont mean the xml file, i mean in editor ) But i still cant figure it out.

Edited February 20, 2019 by Penzed (see edit history)

[Pille]

Press F6, look at the ground and click on the 'sleeper volume' button:

 

[Penzed]

u again, thx will test it...

...

..

.

wow .great..works

Edited February 20, 2019 by Penzed (see edit history)

[Mr.Kinder]

I loved this Thread

 

Now i am going to ask a question that is bothering me and i did not see it in the previous pages.

1؛ I have signs I have put up in my prefab. Is there any way to save the writing on them ?

2؛ how do I keep my none POI things connected to power after save. IE, auto turrets, blades etc?

[Pille]

I loved this Thread

 

Now i am going to ask a question that is bothering me and i did not see it in the previous pages.

1؛ I have signs I have put up in my prefab. Is there any way to save the writing on them ?

2؛ how do I keep my none POI things connected to power after save. IE, auto turrets, blades etc?

 

1. Yes, just write some text on the signs and save the prefab.

2. Unfortunately, that's not possible at the moment. Maybe, in A18 or A19.

[Madman.XXX]

I've seen many posts regarding creating and exporting distant POI meshes. I know how to do that now. What I can't seem to find is a way to remove OLD distant POI meshes.

 

Let me explain. I run a dedicated server and I have cleared a good portion of POIs from a particular region. I did this in world editor, deleting the desired POIs leaving nothing but bare land. I then ran a single player game to to get that region file to generate. I then copied and replaced that same region file into my server of the same seed. It worked great! Those areas are free of my removed POIs. Unfortunately, the distant POI meshes are still there. So from a distance, it looks like those old POIs are still there but disappear when you get close.

 

Is there any way to remove those meshes from my server? Thanks in advance for any advice you can offer.

[bdubyah]

That's the distant terrain. I believe it's generated when the map is, and currently never updates. The devs are looking into trying to have it update during gameplay, but they haven't said much about it.

 

So I don't think there is much you can do with it at the moment.

[Genosis]

I've seen many posts regarding creating and exporting distant POI meshes. I know how to do that now. What I can't seem to find is a way to remove OLD distant POI meshes.

 

Let me explain. I run a dedicated server and I have cleared a good portion of POIs from a particular region. I did this in world editor, deleting the desired POIs leaving nothing but bare land. I then ran a single player game to to get that region file to generate. I then copied and replaced that same region file into my server of the same seed. It worked great! Those areas are free of my removed POIs. Unfortunately, the distant POI meshes are still there. So from a distance, it looks like those old POIs are still there but disappear when you get close.

 

Is there any way to remove those meshes from my server? Thanks in advance for any advice you can offer.

 

Did you just clear the blocks/terrain, or did you delete the prefab designated bounds as well?

 

That is, in the world editor, look at the map, do you still see green squares where those POI's used to be? If so, make sure you are showing bounds in your settings, select it, hit K to open up properties, and select "Delete prefab". That should unregister the prefab from that area, and will no longer render the mesh in that location.

 

That's a guess, I haven't tried but in theory that should work from what I understand of the prefab system.

[Madman.XXX]

Did you just clear the blocks/terrain, or did you delete the prefab designated bounds as well?

 

That is, in the world editor, look at the map, do you still see green squares where those POI's used to be? If so, make sure you are showing bounds in your settings, select it, hit K to open up properties, and select "Delete prefab". That should unregister the prefab from that area, and will no longer render the mesh in that location.

 

That's a guess, I haven't tried but in theory that should work from what I understand of the prefab system.

 

 

That's exactly what I did. It doesn't work. I'm certain it works if I was running the game directly from my same client PC. But once transferred to the dedicated server, those deletions are ignored as far as distant POI mesh. The prefabs are gone, but not the mesh.

[Guppycur]

Meshes are loaded into the chunk. Delete the region files AFTER removing the pois from spawning should work.

[wendi]

hi all ... very new to prefabbing.... so placed zombies in house made them a sleeper volume..... but placed to many zombies ... how do i remove some of them (pick them up) ? and i cant get them to spawn in testworld any reason why that might be?

 

ty all in advance (loves this game)

[Laz Man]

hi all ... very new to prefabbing.... so placed zombies in house made them a sleeper volume..... but placed to many zombies ... how do i remove some of them (pick them up) ? and i cant get them to spawn in testworld any reason why that might be?

 

ty all in advance (loves this game)

I think you can use the z key to highlight a box over them then clear the space using one of the other hotkeys. The hot keys are listed the help menu when you press the escape key.

[Magoli]

hi all ... very new to prefabbing.... so placed zombies in house made them a sleeper volume..... but placed to many zombies ... how do i remove some of them (pick them up) ? and i cant get them to spawn in testworld any reason why that might be?

 

ty all in advance (loves this game)

 

just destroy them in ingame-editor (I always use the devhammer) - then click on "SAVE"